Experience with Dual / Single channel mem?

When I first started to OC this guy I had much worse results using 2*256 in dual channel than I had running it in single channel. But that was some Samsung stuff that was supposed to be PC3200 yet clearly wasn't top of the line.

So I replaced it with 1*512 Mushkin Black Level2 3500. That has been fine but only single channel. Now I've ordered a second 512 because I figure a matched set now is better than something else in the future.

What are experiences running top quality memory in single vs dual mode?

I have Buffalo\Winbond PC3200 which is a little better than your old Samsung IMHO and found that 205FSB was as far as I could go in dual-channel. Now using single-channel I run 220FSB stable in Memtest and Prime. Mushkin Black is some top-level RAM so you may find that you can run dual at a high FSB but testing and benchmarks will give you your answer as everyones mileage is different. I also found that using a tRAS setting of 11 gave me slightly better scores in memory bandwidth and 3DMark vs. something lower.

Regards, Balrog

Well, first trial over. I really did expect some trouble after installing the second 512 but it booted fine and did some work with no problem. Then I ran Prime95 for 6 hours with no problem. I still need to run benchmarks as well as running P95 for at least 12 hours. Plus memtest. Maybe I can OC better with this?

Oddly enough, the system (Win2003 Enterprise Server) complained about not having enough virtual memory shortly after starting P95 and it increased it! I checked using task manager and it was using 100% of the gig. So much for not needing virtual memory if you have a gig - but this is a non-typical case.

I wasn't right at the edge of stability at 212*10 but was still happy that no problems resulted. Now, just for fun, I'll see how far I can push it.